- I am half Scottish and half Mexican.
- Mexican, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian, a little bit of Korean.
- 4/8 Japanese, 3/8 Mexican and 1/8 Filipino.
- I'm Filipino. My family is from the Philippines.
- I'm just a white guy.
What it's like to be ambiguously ethnic
People assume you can speak different languages
- I'm in Chicago, walking on the street,
minding my own business and all of a sudden
there's this lady who's on the phone
trying to get ahold of her Uber driver.
All of a sudden, then she sees me and she's like,
"Excuse me sir, can you take this call?
"This Uber driver, I think he's Middle Eastern, Arabic.
"Can you handle this?
"Can you handle this?"
And I'm like, "You've got to be kidding me"
and I just, kind of kept on walking.
But yeah, everyday occurrences.
Your name confuses people
- We had a substitute teacher
and he was reading off the roll,
like everyone does at the beginning of class.
He got to Ryan Bargara.
I raised my hand and him thinking that
I was pretending to be Ryan Bargara.
And he actually asked,
"Where's the real Ryan Bargara?
"You're not him obviously because"
He almost said, "because you're an Asian guy"
but he didn't.
You know, and that may be one of the few times
where I wasn't sure if I needed to be angry
or if I was more like, shocked.
I actually laughed in this situation
because I thought it was really funny.
But, like, when I thought about it later,
I was like, "Hmm, that was kind of racist."
People assume what you are.
- We were hanging out and getting a drink,
just she and I for the first time, I think.
We were kind of getting to know each other a little bit
and she mentioned something,
"Oh well, cuz you're like Colombian, right Jesse?"
I never mentioned anything about who I am ethnically.
But she assumed Colombian, which was so specific.
And I asked her, I'm like, "No, I'm not Colombian.
"Where did you get that idea?"
And she said, "I don't know because
"you're kind of tan and you have dark hair
"you talk really fast."
I had to say, like, "I'm sorry.
"I'm like, Jewish and Irish, I'm from the suburbs
"of Long Island, I'm not Colombian."
Boring dude from the suburbs.
People just want to know what you are
- I was trying online dating for a while.
Asian males were not very popular
for the online dating websites.
But the times I did get messages,
they were just trying to figure out what I was.
Just like, "Oh, are you Indonesian?"
I'm like, "Nope. I'm Filipino."
Like, "Are you sure?"
Like, "Yup. Pretty sure."
Like, "Man, totally thought you were Indonesian."
End of conversation.
So I didn't do a lot of online dating.
Didn't really work out for me.
- People can't really put you inside of a box.
So people can't really say, like,
"Oh, you're Mexican?
"I'm going to assign this stereotype to you" or
"Oh, you're white?
"I'm going to assign this stereotype."
Like, people just don't really know what I am,
so they don't really know what to expect of me
until I show them.
- I like to consider myself
an ethnic chameleon, if you will.
So if ladies are like,
"You know, I only like light-skinned black guys"
I'm like, "Girl, I'm right here," you know?
If it's like, "I can only date Asian guys,"
like, "Well, I am part Asian."